Does anyone happen to have any other key? I'd offer them my Path of Exile account from 2 years ago if they wish to, or my eternal gratitude otherwise. I didn't manage to get the Nvidia giveaway sadly :/

Not sure if I agreed to an NDA when I got into the Closed Beta (tried finding one after they accepted my beta application, but to no avail), so I'll just base my response on publicly available information.

I don't know how you played earlier titles, but I usually started building residential/commercial zones in one corner, a coal plant or similar in another corner, polluting industry halfway to the third corner and water facilities somewhere around the middle where I could get access to water. Then I just connected the different mini-cities, and developed them synchronously as demand rose, and as budget allowed. Cities in real life are developed in a similar fashion, by interconnected regions focusing on different strengths. That's why commuting exist, several regions on the outskirts focusing on residential areas, and commercial areas dominate in the middle.

By having different strengths for different smaller regions on a map (say, an island), you can develop the island just as you would in real life. You put wind power where there's wind, and you smack up hotels near the beach or near the cliffs facing sunsets, etc. One smaller region is not a complete city. You've got to see the whole picture.

But with that said, yes, I feel the city size is too small.
I would like a sandbox the size of Australia.

I've had about 13hrs played time in it (according to origin) and I'm thoroughly enjoying it, it's very addictive albeit the map size is a bit small and many of the features are locked for the beta/demo but Maxis have said that there are bigger map sizes on the retail version. I don't like the always online BS, the servers were offline most of yesterday (yeah yeah beta), I can see this being Diablo 3 V.2 on launch but still.. fun game and I can't wait till release

Sell a man a fish, and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish, and you lose a great business opportunity.

Originally Posted by Remnas

This guy could sell more Oxyclean than Billy Mays, and make you feel like a badass while using it.

I am kinda sad that they took a more "simple" approach. I dont like that all things depend on the street. Want bigger houses? Get electricity? Dump your shit? The almighty street does it all. One can argue that sim city 4 was overly complicated, but I liked the depth. In Sim City 5 i felt like I was done with my city after about 5-6 hours, no more space on the map... And you get far to much money, you can build without thinking twice.

One thing that's annoyed me this beta which they need to improve is upgrading roads it's just a pain in the ass. It looks good on the whole, though the beta is fairly limited and you tend to find the game gets more challenging when your city gets bigger (this was true of previous installations) with the hour you had you couldn't get that big.
And putting down pipes in simcity4 was tedious it isn't fun it didn't add anything to the game, it was just a chore and power lines you never had to put down anyway as zones would carry power

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying."